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Electricity as the new eggs: Affordability concerns will swing the midterms just like the 2024 election, Bill McKibben says

Published

5 hours ago

January 18, 2026

That sun has provided him cheap power for 25 years, and this month he installed his fourth iteration of solar panels on his Vermont home. In an interview after he set up the new system, he said President Donald Trump’s stance against solar and other cheap green energy will hurt the GOP in this year’s elections as electricity bills rise.

After the Biden and Obama administrations subsidized and championed solar, wind and other green power as answers to fight climate change, Trump has tried to dampen those and turn to older and dirtier fossil fuels. The Trump administration froze five big offshore wind projects last month but judges this week allowed three of the projects to resume. Federal clean energy tax incentives expired on Dec. 31 that include installing home solar panels.

Meanwhile, electricity prices are rising in the United States, and McKibben is counting on that to trigger political change.

“I think you’re starting to see that have a big political impact in the U.S. right now. My prediction would be that electric prices are going to be to the 2026 election what egg prices were to the 2024 election,” said McKibben, an author and founder of multiple environmental and activist groups. Everyday inflation hurt Democrats in the last presidential race, analysts said.

The Trump administration and a bipartisan group of governors on Friday tried to step up pressure on the operator of the nation’s largest electric grid to take urgent steps to boost power supplies in the mid-Atlantic and keep electricity bills from rising even higher.

“Ensuring the American people have reliable and affordable electricity is one of President Trump’s top priorities,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers.

Renewable energy prices drop around the world

Globally, the price of wind and solar power is plummeting to the point that they are cheaper than fossil fuels, the United Nations found. And China leads the world in renewable energy technology, with one of its electric car companies passing Tesla in annual sales.

“We can’t economically compete in a world where China gets a lot of cheap energy and we have to pay for really expensive energy,” McKibben told The Associated Press, just after he installed a new type of solar panels that can hang on balconies with little fuss.

When Trump took office in January 2025, the national average electricity cost was 15.94 cents per kilowatt-hour. By September it was up to 18.07 cents and then down slightly to 17.98 cents in October, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

That’s a 12.8% increase in 10 months. It rose more in 10 months than the previous two years. People in Maryland, New Jersey and Maine have seen electricity prices rise at a rate three times higher than the national average since October 2024.

At 900 kilowatt-hours per month, that means the average monthly electricity bill is about $18 more than in January 2025.

Democrats blame Trump for rising electric bills

This week, Democrats on Capitol Hill blamed rising electric bills on Trump and his dislike of renewable energy.

“From his first day in office, he’s made it his mission to limit American’s access to cheap energy, all in the name of increasing profits for his friends in the fossil fuel industry. As a result, energy bills across the country have skyrocketed,” Illinois Rep. Sean Casten said at a Wednesday news conference.

“Donald Trump is the first president to intentionally raise the price of something that we all need,” Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, also a Democrat, said Wednesday on the Senate floor. “Nobody should be enthused about paying more for electricity, and this national solar ban is making everybody pay more. Clean is cheap and cheap is clean.”

Solar panels on McKibben’s Vermont home

McKibben has been sending excess electricity from his solar panels to the Vermont grid for years. Now he’s sending more.

As his dog, Birke, stood watch, McKibben, who refers to his home nestled in the Green Mountains of Vermont as a “museum of solar technology” got his new panels up and running in about 10 minutes. This type of panel from the California-based firm Bright Saver is often referred to as plug-in solar. Though it’s not yet widely available in the U.S., McKibben pointed to the style’s popularity in Europe and Australia.

“Americans spend three or four times as much money as Australians or Europeans to put solar panels on the roof. We have an absurdly overcomplicated permitting system that’s unlike anything else on the rest of the planet,” McKibben said.

McKibben said Australians can obtain three hours of free electricity each day through a government program because the country has built so many solar panels.

“And I’m almost certain that that’s an argument that every single person in America would understand,” he said. “I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t say: ‘I’d like three free hours of electricity.’”

Swinhart reported from Vermont. Borenstein reported from Washington. Matthew Daly contributed to this report from Washington.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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Business

EU mulls responding to Trump by reviving €93 billion tariff move

Published

1 hour ago

January 18, 2026

Jace Porter

European Union member states are discussing several options for how to respond to President Donald Trump’s latest tariff threat, including imposing retaliatory levies on €93 billion ($108 billion) of US goods, according to people familiar with the talks.

EU ambassadors met Sunday evening in Brussels as they tried to devise a joint response to Trump’s announcement that he would put 10% tariffs on eight European countries on Feb. 1 in relation to their actions in Greenland.

Among the other options being discussed is using a powerful tool known as the anti-coercion instrument, added the people, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive conversations. French President Emmanuel Macron suggested on Sunday the bloc should consider using that new tool, although France backed away from using it in the past after Trump threatened to retaliate.

Last year, the EU had approved retaliatory tariffs on €93 billion of US products but suspended their implementation after the two sides reached a trade pact. European lawmakers suggested over the weekend that they will hold off on approving that trade pact, citing Trump’s latest move.

The Financial Times reported earlier on the discussions over reviving retaliatory tariffs.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Business

BlackRock’s Rick Rieder bid for Fed chair is gaining traction

Published

2 hours ago

January 18, 2026

Jace Porter

The candidacy of BlackRock’s Rick Rieder to be the next Federal Reserve chair has gained late momentum, people familiar with the matter say, as President Donald Trump weighs congressional blowback in his bid to put a friendlier face at the head of the central bank.

Trump’s interview Thursday with Rieder went well, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations.

Key senators such as Republican Banking Committee member Thom Tillis have warned that Trump’s Fed picks will get more scrutiny after the Justice Department subpoenaed the Fed last week over statements by Chair Jerome Powell related to a renovation project at the bank’s headquarters. But Powell, whose term expires in May, contends the criminal probe is a pretext to punish him for not cutting rates quickly enough.

Trump, asked Friday about the selection process, said he had a candidate in mind, while declining to name him. “I think I have it — in my mind, done,” he said.

The search is now a four-man race, some of the people said, among Rieder, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, Fed Governor Christopher Waller and former governor Kevin Warsh, the people said.

Hassett was an early frontrunner and continued to be until Trump said this week he may not want to lose Hassett from his current role. It’s not clear if it was a signal of a shifting internal deliberation, or an offhand remark.

“Nobody knows who President Trump will choose for the Fed, except President Trump himself. As the president recently said, he will announce his final decision soon,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a written statement Saturday.

The decision to subpoena the Fed a week ago sparked a wave of backlash, including a pledge by Tillis — who sits on the committee that would first consider a nominee — to oppose any Fed nomination until the matter is resolved.

Rieder, BlackRock’s chief investment officer of global fixed income, is viewed as potentially easier to confirm, some of the people said. A spokesperson for BlackRock declined to comment on Rieder’s status.

Hiring data released earlier this month suggested the labor market remained fragile at the end of the year, and the outlook for hiring is guarded. Economists see another year of limited job opportunities and cooling pay gains, likely exacerbating voters’ affordability concerns going into this year’s midterm elections.

Fed officials cut rates three consecutive times at the end of 2025, but have signaled they’re in no rush to lower them again until they see more data on inflation and the labor market. Policymakers are expected to hold rates steady at their next meeting on Jan. 27-28.

Rieder has called the Fed’s independence “critical,” but has also echoed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in saying the central bank could be more “innovative” in how it uses its balance sheet.

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Army readies 1,500 paratroopers specializing in arctic ops for possible Minnesota deployment

Published

2 hours ago

January 18, 2026

Jace Porter

The Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active-duty soldiers to be ready in case of a possible deployment to Minnesota, where federal authorities have been conducting a massive immigration enforcement operation, two defense officials said Sunday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military plans, said two infantry battalions of the Army’s 11th Airborne Division have been given prepare-to-deploy orders. The unit is based in Alaska and specializes in operating in arctic conditions.

One defense official said the troops are standing by to deploy to Minnesota should President Donald Trump invoke the Insurrection Act, a rarely-used 19th century law that would allow him to employ active duty troops as law enforcement.

The move comes just days after Trump threatened to do just that to quell protests against his administration’s immigration crackdown.

In an emailed statement, Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell did not deny the orders were issued and said the military “is always prepared to execute the orders of the Commander-in-Chief if called upon.”

ABC News was the first to report the development.

On Thursday, Trump said in a social media post that he would invoke the 1807 law “if the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job.”

He appeared to walk back the threat a day later, telling reporters at the White House that there wasn’t a reason to use it “right now.”

“If I needed it, I’d use it,” Trump said. “It’s very powerful.”

Trump has repeatedly threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act throughout both of his terms. In 2020 he also threatened to use it to quell protests after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, and in recent months he threatened to use it for immigration protests.

The law was most recently invoked by President George H.W. Bush in 1992 to end unrest in Los Angeles after the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating of Rodney King.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat and frequent target of Trump, has urged the president to refrain from sending in more troops.

“I’m making a direct appeal to the President: Let’s turn the temperature down. Stop this campaign of retribution. This is not who we are,” Walz said last week on social media.

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